Fred Maroun is a Canadian of Arab origin who lived in Lebanon until 1984, including during 10 years of civil war. Fred supports Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, and he supports a liberal and democratic Middle East where all religions and nationalities, including Palestinians, can co-exist in peace with each other and with Israel. More blogs by Fred Maroun can be found at http://www.jpost.com/Blogger/Fred-Maroun and http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/author/fred-maroun/.

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Calling for an awakening of conscience: Palestinians are real people

Israel
is accused by “pro-Palestinian”
activists of having little care for Palestinian
civilians, of dehumanizing them, but reality is quite different. Although there is extensive dehumanizing of
the Palestinians, the guilty party is not who you might think.

Israel
is accused of humiliating Palestinians at security checkpoints, and she is
accused of not taking enough care in attacks against Hamas to avoid civilian
casualties. Some even go as far as
accusing Israel of genocide against the Palestinians.

The
truth is quite different. Although
Palestinians do indeed experience humiliation in some cases at checkpoints, and
although there are too many civilian casualties during Israeli attacks on
terrorists (even one is too many), there is extensive evidence that Israel
applies standards of care that are at least as good as any Liberal democracy
would apply in similar circumstances. And
there is certainly no genocide.

The
dehumanizing of the Palestinians does indeed happen among overzealous
pro-Zionist activists. Some of these
activists, especially the ones who do not live in Israel, tend to think of
Palestinians in abstract terms. They use
arguments such as “there is no such thing as Palestinians”, and they insensitively
dismiss real Palestinian tragedies (such as the destruction caused by wars in
Gaza, or the dire situation of refugees in Arab countries) as unimportant since
Israel is legitimately defending itself.

The
dehumanizing of the Palestinians is also widespread
among Arab regimes. They used the Palestinians as pawns from the
moment Israel’s independence was declared, and they continue to do so today. The fact that Arab regimes do not offer
citizenship to the Palestinian refugees that they have hosted for decades is a
neglect that would be vilified in the strongest terms if it were taking place
in Europe or North America, but because the offenders are Arabs and the victims
are Arabs, the world ignores the crime and even encourages it by funding it
through a specially-formed UN agency (the UNRWA).

The
all-time champions in dehumanizing Palestinians, however, are the inappropriately
named “pro-Palestinian” activists. While
some Zionists unfairly ignore any deaths in Gaza, “pro-Palestinian” activists use
Palestinian deaths for propaganda purposes and in the same breath refuse to
demand an end to terrorist attacks from Gaza.
Yet stopping terrorist attacks from Gaza is the only way to prevent civilians
from being caught in the crossfire of retaliations by Israel. While some Zionists see the defense of Israel
as an objective that overrides any Palestinian interests, “pro-Palestinian”
activists see the destruction of Israel as an objective that can only be
achieved through
Palestinian deaths.

In
the West Bank too, “pro-Palestinian” activists use
Palestinians as pawns. They are engaged in a campaign to
de-legitimize Israeli businesses that operate in the West Bank regardless of
the fact that those businesses typically provide good employment opportunities
to Palestinians. “Pro-Palestinian”
activists see the loss of jobs by Palestinians as a reasonable price to pay for
the greater goal of weakening Israel.

The
“pro-Palestinian” activists have therefore entirely completed the switch from supposedly
being pro-Palestinian to being fully anti-Palestinian. While they claim to defend the interests of
Palestinians, they in fact thrive on the deaths and unemployment of
Palestinians.

Palestinians
are real. They are not abstractions, and
each Palestinian life matters. John
Calvin is a Palestinian refugee in Canada who
is in danger of being deported back to the Palestinian territories where his
life would be at risk due to his homosexuality, his conversion to Christianity,
and his support for Israel. We have yet
to see a single “pro-Palestinian” group come to the defense of Calvin. There is no doubt that if Calvin was a supporter
of Hamas and in danger of being jailed by Israel, “pro-Palestinian” groups
would have sprung to his defense, but because he supports Israel, they do not
see him as a Palestinian worth defending.
It is not Palestinian lives that “pro-Palestinian” activists value; it
is the propaganda value of Palestinian lives and deaths that they value.

Of
course for anti-Zionists, it all starts with dehumanizing Israelis. If they realized that Israelis are real
people, they would be more likely to realize that Palestinians too are real
people. Anti-Zionists, however, see
Israelis as an abstract imperialist blob.
Besides the fact that Israel is not an imperialist enterprise but a
native enterprise, no two Israelis are exactly the same, but to anti-Zionists,
all Israelis must be denounced, boycotted, isolated, and ultimately made to
disappear.

Is
it important that the IDF see Palestinians as people? Yes of course it is, but the IDF is reminded
of this fact 24 hours a day, every day of the year, by hordes of people, even
Israelis themselves, but in reality the IDF does a decent job of it and does
not need to be reminded so often. Those
hordes of people do not however look in the mirror and see that they, more than
anyone else, routinely and thoughtlessly dehumanize Palestinians.

Whenever
they are told that their actions hurt the Palestinians far more than they hurt
Israel, “pro-Palestinian” activists plug their ears and start shouting “la la
la la, I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you”, then they go back to their mantra
about the Israelis having stolen land and needing to be punished and being
all-around evil people and so on. It
would be funny if it were not real.

It
is appalling but somewhat expected (given over 67 years of violence against
Israel) that some Zionists would dehumanize Palestinians, but it is quite a
tragedy that “pro-Palestinian” activists are even worse offenders. The compulsive and fanatical nature of
anti-Zionism is the problem. It
prevents its adherents from seeing the trees while they obsess about a forest
that mostly exists in their imaginations.
The hateful nature of anti-Zionism burns everything around it, and the
Palestinians are its main victims.

We
therefore call for an awakening of conscience among the ranks of those who call
themselves pro-Palestinian. If they
truly are pro-Palestinian, and not simply anti-Israel, then we expect them to
strongly condemn Hamas terrorism and Fatah corruption which are the main causes
of Palestinian suffering, rather than demonize Israel while ignoring the
consequences of that demonization on the lives of real Palestinians.

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About Me

Fred is a Canadian of Arab origin who supports Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. He also supports a liberal and democratic Middle East where all religions and nationalities, including Palestine, can co-exist in peace with each other and with Israel, and where human rights are respected.